Beer and Cheese

Our winter activities (while stuck at home in the rain) have include two new experiments: brewing beer and making cheese.

The beer process has been guided by the advice of our local homebrew store employees, and a great book (Joy of Homebrewing).

We have about five gallons of "Baller Brown" brown ale bottled and chilling in the basement. Might have to crack into in over the weekend and sample our first batch. (We did sneak some sips when bottling it, and it seemed like we were on the right track!)



The cheese experiment was a huge success-- probably thanks to the liquid rennet I found at the homebrew store. A friend and I made two batches, one with the readily available Junket rennet tablets (presumably vegetarian), and one with the "animal based rennet" that came in liquid form. The animal based one is sourced from veal, so definitely not vegetarian friendly.

The batch made with liquid rennet was amazingly easy- from start to finish about 20 minutes. The tablet batch didn't work out so well, after an hour and a half of waiting for it to thicken, we called it good enough and ate it in mushy ricotta-like form.

I experimented with using the leftover whey to cook pasta last night and it was delicious!